


Betrayal

by theLiterator



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betrayal, Blood, Combat, Dark Voltron Week, Flashbacks, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 05:40:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9307841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: When sparring with Pidge, Shiro remembers something unforgivable.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Dark Voltron Week](http:%5C%5Cdarkvoltronweek.tumblr.com) Day One: Violence / Betrayal (I totally used both prompts for this.)

Shiro hated the flashbacks. The parts of him that were _aware_ of them as flashbacks didn't really appreciate having to remember bits of contextless _horror_ from the year he'd lost, and the parts of him that weren't aware, well.

It just, it always felt so _real_ and it always happened at the worst times.

Like, for instance, during one-on-one combat training Pidge had specifically requested because she was sick to death of Lance making stupid comments about her bayard.

She'd gotten him down and had slashed for his throat and he'd opened his mouth to say “Good,” and advise her on her next move when he'd tasted blood, hot and iron and _his_ and he wasn't seeing Pidge anymore, he was.

“ _Matt!” he said. “We had a plan, remember?”_

 _“_ What about Matt?” Pidge demanded, dropping her practice weapon, “Did you remember my brother?”

Shiro shook his head, trying to rid himself of the insane double vision and the taste of his own blood. Unwilling, he clapped his hand over his face, and it felt simultaneously wet and dry.

He couldn't scream though, not with Pidge hovering so close, not with _Matt looming over him, vicious shiv in his hand._

He rolled over and Pidge let him although she kept a slim hand between his shoulder blades, rubbing little soothing circles while Shiro wiped his face frantically.

He wanted to send her away, for her own sake, but in order to do that he'd have to _explain_ and he didn't think he could do that. Not ever.

So he let her comfort him while he fought back to the present with everything he had, and once he could breathe and swallow without the taste of blood again, he let her hug him, even wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair, let her _comfort_ him even though letting her comfort him, it turned out, was the most unforgivable thing he would ever do.

“Do you remember what you remembered?” she asked after a few minutes of quiet.

He shook his head, unable to lie aloud, not even about this, and she sighed.

“That's okay,” she said. “I've been reading the Altean database about this sort of thing and apparently selective amnesia is perfectly normal.”

“For Alteans,” he said, and she shrugged.

“Do you want to go play that game I found instead?”

He shook his head again.

“Alright. Come find one of us if you need to though, okay?”

“Yeah, Pidge,” he said. “Of course.”

He even managed to smile for her, and she stood up first, offering him a hand up that he made himself take.

****

He handled the memory the way he always did: huddled in the shower in his quarters (the least alien thing about the Castle and he had a lot to be grateful for but sometimes the fact that the Alteans hadn't believed in dust baths or something was one of the few things he could truly thank the universe for offering him.

****

“You can't do this forever,” Matt said, pacing the length of their cell with a frantic waste of energy that made Shiro want to snap about how he couldn't _fight_ if he didn't _rest,_ but last time he'd done that Matt had started crying and his ability to deal with an LT’s tears was basically nil _._

“I can do this as long as it takes,” Shiro replied instead.

“They're gonna make you kill someone eventually, or you'll face one of us _featherweights_ or… you're going to have to kill, Shiro. _I’m_ going to have to kill.”

“They're _slaves_ , Matt. They don't have a choice, and I'm not going to take their _lives_ for it,” Shiro replied the way he had a hundred times before.

“Why can't you just… understand?” Matt said, flopping heavily down on the pile of blankets Shiro had fought to earn them.

“Because I don't _want_ _to,_ ” Shiro snarled, regretting it immediately when Matt flinched.

“Sorry,” he muttered, staring at his hands.

Matt groaned. “I'm tired,” he said, which blatantly was not true, as Matt was never tired, and Shiro obediently laid down next to him, letting Matt curl in against his back and share his body heat.

Unlike Matt, Shiro _had_ been tired, so tired that he'd slept through Matt waking up and being escorted to the arena by the guards and had to awakened later, alone, with a bucket of brackish water.

“Ugh,” he muttered, clearing his eyes of the muck and knowing that he wouldn't be given the chance to spread the blankets out to dry while he was off trying really hard not to kill or die for a crowd’s amusement.

The guards snarled a command in Galran that Shiro had figured out meant “Move it” or some approximation thereof, and Shiro scowled at them before letting them escort him out.

The first three aliens he fought were at least twice as big as him, and one of them was from a race of pacifist vegans that communicated with sign- and body-language and a mild sort of telepathy that Shiro had learned was worth its weight in _gold_ in the mixed-race gladiator cells, and he disliked hurting them enough that they’d have to visit the druids, but he disliked the idea of killing them even _more._

The day’s games were drawing to a close by then, each opponent more violent and skilled than the one before it, and he could feel the unrest in the crowd.

 _Matt’s right_ , he thought, even though he’d never admit it aloud. _One day, there won’t be a choice, and someone’s going to die._

He knocked his opponent unconscious and wondered if he was a good enough person to let it be him and not… some alien.

His next opponent made the crowd go quiet with eager anticipation, and Shiro almost _couldn’t_ bring himself to turn around, but he knew there’s no such thing as delaying these matches, so he did, slowly, trying to quash that sick feeling in the parts of him that had started to learn the crowd’s moods.

Matt stood at the far side of the arena, hair spiky with different colors of blood, green and purple and an ugly, poison-looking yellow, and he was grinning a little, manic and bright.

Shiro could see the glint of metal in his fist.

There’ve always been weapons for them-- you just have to know the right guard to sweet talk, and Shiro’s always been good about sussing out new territory, so he’d figured it out within the first day or so.

But he’d seen what poisons they used, seen how easy it was to slice flesh from bone with the right kind of tool in his hands, and it had turned his stomach.

He flashed, briefly, to the conversation he’d had with Matt: “We have to survive!” “I won’t kill innocent slaves!” and realized that it was a bad sign but there wasn’t much he can do about it right that second.

“Matt,” he called. “What are you doing?”

“One of us has to survive,” Matt hollered back. “One of us has to warn Earth. And if you won’t do it, I guess I have to!”

Shiro took a breath and wondered how much of that the clumsy translators caught, even as the crowd started murmuring eager approval.

“Matt, don’t do this!” he shouted. The announcer for the match was droning on and on and occasionally people screamed above them.

He felt a lot like a circus elephant a lot of the time here, but right at that moment, he felt like an ant under a magnifying glass.

“I don’t have a choice.” Matt’s shout echoed between them, and then the force field that split the arena dropped, and Matt charged.

The problem was that Shiro was bigger than Matt in every dimension, and he had always been good at hand to hand combat: he’d grown up with a keen interest in the elegance of martial arts and the hand to hand trainer at the Garrison had been happy to provide him extra credit and one on one sessions whenever he’d asked.

Matt might have a shiv now, and he might have killed a bunch of helpless aliens from world the Galrans had enslaved, but he wasn’t _actually_ a match for Shiro.

Shiro took the first assault head on where Matt had been expecting him to side-step, so the blade merely grazed his shoulder and Matt lost all of his momentum in trying to keep from winding up too close for a blade to do him any good, and Shiro tackled him, twsiting him down to the ground and getting him pinned as gently as possible.

“Put the stupid knife _down_ , LT!” Shiro snarled, and Matt didn’t even seem to hear him, too busy slashing inwards to get at Shiro’s wrists and force him to relinquish the hold.

He got in at a lucky angle and Shiro had to jerk away or risk his artery, and then Matt went for his eyes.

_Matt went for his eyes._

Shiro hadn’t expected that, not in a million years, not from LT Holt, who he’d trusted like a brother and more, and so he was a half second too late drawing back, and the knife cut through the skin on his face like it was _nothing_ and he _yelled_.

The crowd liked pain-- there was no point holding it back, and besides, maybe screaming would be what it took to _get Matt to drop the knife._

Matt shook his head to clear his eyes of _Shiro’s blood_ , of red and living and not alien at all and oh, God, Shiro was pretty sure he was going to die.

Matt was going to kill him.

He knew how to disarm an armed opponent though, and he slammed his hand into Matt’s wrist and felt the dull snap of at least one of the bones breaking, heard Matt cry out and heard him try to muffle it, and Matt flipped them over just so he could reach for the knife again with his good hand.

Shiro shoved it away, enough taller than him that he could put it out of reach, and Matt retaliated by headbutting him, and breaking his nose; which, coupled with the open wound made Shiro’s vision go white with pain for a moment.

He clamped his hand over his face instincively and blinked up at Matt.

“Matt!” he said. “We had a plan, remember!”

And okay, it hadn’t been a great plan but it also hadn’t been the sort of plan that involved Matt killing Shiro or Shiro _seriously injuring_ Matt, so it was a hell of a lot better than this.

“Fuck your plan, Shirogane!” Matt snarled back, and he managed to break free of Shiro’s hold, and Shiro let him, because it was either let Matt go or try to hold him and miss the opportunity to grab the knife.

They circled each other for a few minutes, until the crowd started getting impatient again, and Matt said “Give that back, if you’re not going to use it!” he shouted, feinting for Shiro.

Shiro shook his head and threw the knife over his shoulder as far as he could, privately hoping it would hit an audience member.

“Matt--” Shiro said, and Matt rushed him again.

He tried to tackle him, and did succeed in wrapping his hands around Shiro’s throat.

Shiro sucked in a breath urgently before Matt’s finger got the right angle to cut off his air, and he panicked and shoved Matt back down on his back instead of doing any number of moves to break the hold.

“Shiro,” Matt said, and his fingers tightened. “My mom; my sister. You don’t understand!”

Except Shiro _did_ understand: he understood that he couldn’t breathe and that Matt was the thing preventing air from hitting his lungs.

Shiro got a grip on Matt’s blood-encrusted hair and slammed his head into the ground, hard, but Matt’s eyes didn’t close, his fingers didn’t relax, and Shiro had to do it again, harder, desperate to breathe, to _live,_ and he _kept_ slamming Matt’s head into the ground, even once his eyes had unfocused, even once the red, human blood spilling onto the arena floor wasn’t even _mostly_ his anymore.

They’d had to tranquilize him just to get him off of his best friend’s corpse, and…

And Pidge could never, _ever_ know.


End file.
